


Five Minute Interlude - Hers

by Occasionalcoffeethereturn



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:38:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4758443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Occasionalcoffeethereturn/pseuds/Occasionalcoffeethereturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Next part of the story following on from Bedtime Promises, but can be read as a stand alone.</p>
<p>Sometimes a girl needs a little extra time in the bathroom to collect her thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Minute Interlude - Hers

The bathroom. I can get five minutes away from him in the bathroom. I just need a few minutes to calm down, that's all. He'll understand that without me telling him. A few minutes to myself and I'll be fine. He's tried to promise we'll be ok and I want to believe him, I really do. But doubts are normal, worst case scenario thoughts are healthy to avoid the disappointment. Right? 

I love him, my God I love him so much but the thought of leaving him actually takes my breath out my lungs. It physically hurts. It's too hard. It's too fucking hard. We've been living together for fuck's sake and it didn't even happen deliberately it just happened. He came over the night we started filming and just didn't leave. I didn't want him to and he didn't want to go. So he stayed.

I don't actually know how to deal with this. It feels new to me. I've always been fine when I'm alone, I prefer it. I love having my own space and my own freedom. I like time in my own head to work things out and finally after all these years I feel comfortable doing it. Just me, myself and I. It's just that now the time I have on my own feels better with him in it, with him filling up that space. This must be what true love feels like and it's fucking overwhelming. You may laugh but I can feel my heart breaking. It is an actual sensation, there is actual physical pain inside my chest right now. It actually feels like I'm swollen inside. My eyes feel so clogged with tears, my throat is closing off and I can barely even breathe.

And I'm having all these thoughts sat on the edge of a fucking bath tub of all places.

I actually believe that I've been waiting nearly twenty five years to feel like this, to really allow myself to feel like this. Clyde loved me enough to leave me alone. It was almost like he always knew we were too good to be true. I liked him, he was funny and sweet and we laughed and we had some good times. But he realised that I was better without him than with him, and one day decided that maybe he should just leave me to be alone. So he did. He left. And we realised afterwards that we made better friends than anything else and perhaps that's all we should have tried to be to start with. All hail the benefit of hindsight. 

Then there was the 8-pack of distraction. Rodney. A well built, tall, dark handsome stranger. Women have needs too, and I can't deny he didn't meet them, he did. The sex was amazing, frantic, hot and adventurous. It reminded me a little of sex with David and if I squinted and had enough vodka sometimes I could pretend that he was him. How fucked up that really was. I say it reminded me a little, because nothing on this earth compares to sex with David and it never will. Then the distraction wanted more than to be a distraction. He wanted more than I could give him and he knew before he even asked me what my answer was going to be to his proposal.

I was alone for a long time after that, finding me and concentrating on my daughter and knowing I'd never love another person like I love her. And then Africa happened and I saw things from a more simple view point. Without realising it, Julian was Clyde but on a different continent. I convinced myself that the one thing I'd been fleeing my whole life, the one thing I will admit still scares the fuck out of me was the thing that I wanted. Mediocrity. Safety. Dependability, more kids and another husband. Because that would make things all right wouldn't it? A husband who, for all intents and purposes told me I'd never have to work again. I could have whatever I wanted and what need was there for me to work? He didn't know me at all and I was backing away, backing myself into my own corner feeling walls either side and seeing so many things in that equation weren't mean to be. I think deep down all I really wanted was to be a mom again, to feel that same love I'd felt with my daughter. I even tried to start two lives with him which never got to begin. Maybe those tiny collections of cells just knew they weren't meant to be and expelled themselves from my body in the most excruciatingly painful way.

I ran from one kind of mediocrity to another. Run across a continent the problem goes away, right? It worked before right? Third time lucky, right? Literally and all too obviously I ran straight from one mans bed into another. Another life began and grew inside of me this time and I tried to convince myself that my unborn child deserved to have two parents and I should try, for once I should really try and see if I could do that.

It's amazing how much time and how distracted a newborn can make you. I'd forgotten all this from the first time around. I was older, more tired and time just passed me by. But I wanted to do it again, I knew I wanted to do it again and so we tried and it happened. Just like that.

It's amazing how two toddlers can distract you from the things that are wrong. But that can only happen for so long. I papered over cracks and I tried, I really did try. 'It's not you its me.' Sorry Mark, but that really was the truth.

And yet through all this, alongside all of this had been one constant. My constant. My touchstone. Those weren't just lines he wrote for an episode, that was how he felt about me and I know that now. And I could never feel bad for loving him through all those years, I physically, mentally and emotionally could not keep away from him. Neither of us can explain the connection to each other we have. It's more than chemistry, electricity. It goes deeper than that and it's like nothing I've ever experienced. It's love. Real, true, love. And I know I don't ever want to experience anything else. He is it for me and I couldn't be more grateful to God or Allah or Buddha that we are where we are today.

One of us can't cross the ocean for the other, it wouldn't be fair on us or on our families. I'm not deluded and I'm not stupid enough to think that will happen. But it doesn't make it hurt any less, in fact it makes it hurt that bit more. There is no solution, only compromise to be reached between us.

And maybe my compromise right now could be to open the fucking bathroom door now I've straightened out my head. And right on cue I can hear him shuffling out of bed on the other side of it, he'll be listening to see if he can hear any clues as to how I am. He'll know I've run the water to try and hide the sound of my sobbing but he'll have heard it any way. He'll be wondering when it's ok to knock, when I'll have had enough time on my own. Whether he should say anything. He'll maybe joke about it, or he'll say something light hearted and I'll smile and I'll open the door. 

'Sweetheart. Take your time but it won't be comfortable to sleep in that bath tub in there.'

Lately I love him all the more for never disappointing me.


End file.
